proto-National Bell Register work

[John Baldwin]

The following has been prepared to provide some factual information 
for all who may be interested in what has happened (via one person's 
effort) towards a proposed National Bell Register. It would appear 
that most of the postings in the last few days have taken little 
account of what can already be found within the Dove website. 

If one goes to the Help section of Dove, where the search facilities 
are described, the reader will find, within the 4th paragraph 
after 'and press the "Go" button' (near the top), a link to the 
following page:

http://www.cccbr.org.uk/dove/bellsTableDesc.php

and that particular webpage indicates just where the work I have been 
progressing - within the context of the Dove project - has reached. 
Approximately 2% of all towers containing rings of 3 and upwards are 
now showing details of their bells. (OK - not the full gamut of bell 
locations - but it's a start.)

Towards the end of the same page, I deal with 'Errors and Omissions' 
and 'Supplying Details'. Both of these sections will be amended in 
the course of the next few weeks as the further facilities on which 
we (ie, my son Sid and I) are actively working become available for 
people 'who think they know' to tell us 'what they know' - and all 
such contributions will be gratefully received and acknowledged.

After a short period (with some invited participants) to assess the 
usability of what we have designed, people generally will be able to 
supply us with (relatively) SMALL amounts of data (ie, on a bell by 
bell basis for any given tower), and to supply corrections for what 
is already being shown. I hope that is now not too far ahead for me 
to be 'announcing it' here.

Those with LARGE quantities of data (for instance, held as a 
multitower spreadsheet or a database) will appreciate that conversion 
between their own particular format and any other format (in the Dove 
case, that suitable for importing into the underlying database) often 
has to be done on a one-off basis and it will take a little longer to 
be able to give general guidelines as to how best such bulk data can 
be presented to make wholesale inclusion as painless for me as 
possible. I am hopeful that the CCC will be able to give their 
approval for much of George Dawson's data to be incorporated in this 
way, and if others are similarly prepared to share their results, I'd 
be grateful to hear from them - in due course. Comments on where 
we're at are also welcome, but I would appreciate those making them 
to bear in mind the huge amount of time this work takes up (and 
actually I am no longer working full-time!).

As indicated above, this is a one-person project within the context 
of Dove (and not - as I quite wittingly guided the Central Council at 
Llandudno - under the umbrella of its Committee for Redundant Bells) 
in order to make a start towards a National Bell Register and, at 
present, at no monetary cost to anyone. The results of this work and 
all the data that we acquire will be made available to any full NBR 
project as and when it is properly defined and formally set up and 
appropriately staffed. The questions that others have already raised 
about its scope, ownership, cost, effort, etc, are all highly 
relevant to a fully fledged project.